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What’s replacing the empty Pathmark in Howell?

Hobby Lobby, a national arts and crafts retailer, will expand to its second location in Monmouth County by moving into a vacated storefront within a township shopping plaza, which desperately needs anchor tenants.

Hobby Lobby, a national arts and crafts retailer, will expand to its second location in Monmouth County by moving into a vacated Pathmark storefront within a highway shopping plaza, which desperately needs anchor tenants.

The Oklahoma City-based company, which offers more than 67,000 crafting and home-decor products in its more than 550 stores across the U.S., will fill the vacant space in Friendship Plaza on Route 9 South.

When the store opens on July 7, officials said, it will help revitalize the heavily vacant 222,800-square-foot shopping plaza, of which 129,000 square feet — more than half its size — remains empty. During the past year, the shopping plaza not only lost a 48,400-square-foot Pathmark, but also a 10,500-square-foot Childrenswear Centre and a 70,200-square-foot Kmart.

“Any shopping plaza, where you have a group of stores like that, really thrives on traffic,” said Jeffrey Filiatreault, the township’s chief financial officer and manager. “Something like Hobby Lobby, they’re a fairly good-sized store. They’re going to bring traffic in the form of people going to that store and that’s certainly going to help the whole rest of the development.”

Hobby Lobby also will boost the local job market by hiring 30 to 50 employees for a range of positions, including cashiers, custom picture framers, department heads, dockers, a floral designer and an office manager. Pay starts at $15 per hour for full-time employees and $10 for part-time ones.

Prior to opening, the company will continue to make structural improvements to its future space — including renovations of the facade and the installation of new shelves — at a cost it declined to reveal.

“They’re going to perform very well,” said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates Inc., a New York-based national retail consulting and investment banking firm. “They have products that people are going to be very interested in that you can’t find everywhere. They’re one of retail’s largest private companies in the United States and they’ve been able to compete with everybody because their sector is doing well.”

Hobby Lobby will sit just a half-mile north on the other side of Route 9 from an existing Michaels Stores — another national retailer of arts and crafts based in Irving, Texas. Davidowitz says that he foresees healthy competition between both businesses, but he thinks Hobby Lobby offers a superior experience for a number of reasons.

“Their customer service, their store layout, their assortment, their pricing is all good,” he said. “I think that they compare very favorably to Michaels. The private companies have almost all disappeared. The independent owners don’t really exist anymore, but Hobby Lobby is like a tremendous exception. They’re run by a very religious family. They treat their people very well; it’s one of the reasons you get great service.”

Recently, however, Hobby Lobby has attracted controversy, both locally and nationally. Late last year, Hobby Lobby agreed to sell Hanukkah-related merchandise in its New Jersey and New York stores after a local blogger noticed a lack thereof in the company’s store on Route 9 North in Marlboro.

The company also remains embroiled in a Supreme Court case as it challenges regulations under the Affordable Care Act that requires it to pay for employees’ birth control despite the owners’ Christian religious beliefs.

Still though, Hobby Lobby will enhance its presence in New Jersey by the end of this year. On the same day the company opens its store in Howell, it also will open stores in Phillipsburg and Totowa. Meanwhile, besides Marlboro, it already owns stores in Lawrenceville, Millville and South Plainfield.